The
survey was funded by the National
Science Foundation and administered in June 2010 by Woods
Institute Senior Fellow Jon Krosnick, a professor of communication
and political science at Stanford University. From June 1-7, 1,000
randomly selected American adults were chosen to participate in the
survey via telephone interviews.

According
to the June 2010 survey, 74
percent of Americans think the Earth's temperature probably
has been heating up over the last 100 years, and 75 percent think
human activity is the reason why.

"Several
national surveys released during the last eight months have been
interpreted as showing that fewer and fewer Americans believe
that climate
change is real, human-caused and threatening," said
Krosnick. "But our new survey shows just the opposite."

While
the number of people who
believe in global warming has increased, Krosnick says there
are people who do not trust climate scientists and they "base
their conclusions on their personal observations of nature."
According to Krosnick, 2008 was the coldest year since 2000 in terms
of average Earth temperature, and these "low-trust individuals
were especially aware of the recent decline in average world
temperatures" and "they were the ones in our survey whose
doubts about global warming have increased since 2007."

"Our
surveys reveal a small decline in the proportion of people who
believe global warming has been happening, from 84 percent in 2007 to
74 percent today," said Krosnick. "Statistical analysis of
our data revealed that this decline is attributable to perceptions of
recent weather changes by the minority of Americans who
have been skeptical about climate scientists."

The
survey also included questions concerning the "climategate"
controversy, where thousands of e-mails and other documents were
leaked from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit.
Only nine percent of American's said they knew about this controversy
and that it caused them to distrust climate scientists. Despite all
the skeptics, there has been no decline in trust for environmental
scientists.

Krosnick
believes that the decline in proportion of people is likely
temporary, and the skeptics will probably join the majority who think
global warming is real if the Earth's temperature begins to rise
again.

Out
of those respondents who believe global warming exists, 86 percent
want the government to "limit the amount of air pollution that
businesses emit," 76 percent of respondents want government
limitations on greenhouse gas emissions "generated by
businesses" and 14 percent think the government should not take
action at all unless other countries
like China and India do so as well. Though, in the UK,
Professor Seamus Garvey at the University of Nottingham has designed
a plan to power the UK completely by renewable energy by
2030 through the use of off-shore
energy farms.

Other
survey results include four out of five participants wanting the
government to offer tax breaks to encourage more fuel efficient
vehicles, 84 percent want tax breaks for utilities that use more
green methods for power generation, and 80 percent want more energy
efficient appliances.

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This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled

Polls like this out of Stanford are useful for proving nothing. By their own charts, the number of "respondents who believe that world's temperatures have probably been going up slowly in the past 100 years" dropped form 85% in 2006 to 75% in 2009. As a matter of fact, all the other charts presented by the Stanford Poll seem to indicate overall that people's belief in global warming has declined.

According to the article posted on the Stanford website, Krosnick has only been tracking the public opinion portion of the poll since 2006; the same year that "An Inconvenient Truth" was released. Politically motivated or just timely polling?

Public opinion on the reality of global warming is merely a reflection of the hype and attention the media chooses to give the topic. Given that the Stanford numbers show a three year decline in the belief of global warming only seems to indicate that the marketing budget for promoting global warming has been reduced.

quote: According to the article posted on the Stanford website, Krosnick has only been tracking the public opinion portion of the poll since 2006; the same year that "An Inconvenient Truth" was released. Politically motivated or just timely polling?

[...] or the article actually says that Krosnick has asked similar questions while at Woods Institute since 2006, but he actually has analyzed similar surveys since at least 1998 while at Ohio State University ...

Krosnick stating that he analyzed similar surveys since 1998 is not the same as publishing survey results since 1998.

While analyzing survey results since 1998 gives credibility to Krosnick's ability to interpret and present survey results accurately it does not change the fact that he only added the public opinion portion to the Stanford survey in 2006.

Again, the same year that "An Inconvenient Truth" was released. Politically motivated or just timely polling?

"A politician stumbles over himself... Then they pick it out. They edit it. He runs the clip, and then he makes a funny face, and the whole audience has a Pavlovian response." -- Joe Scarborough on John Stewart over Jim Cramer